Kids these days

The hubster and I had his son for the weekend.  We had fun playing with the Xbox Kinect and watching old Disney movies.  They are old in that they were made over 10 years ago, but I wouldn't refer to them as old.  The animated movies with all the songs will never be old.  After watching Mulan and Hercules, I wished that they still made movies like this.  Tangled was ok, but it was lacking in the song area.

Anyway, as we were finishing up lunch on Sunday, the hubster asked his son what he wanted for his birthday.  Do you want to know what he asked for?

• a million dollars
• through constant denial, he lowered it to a much more reasonable $250 (*note the sarcasm in this line)
• a nintendo 3DS

WTF?!?!  This kid has a habit of asking for super expensive gifts when it comes to Christmas and birthdays.  I mean we just got him a Nintendo DS for Christmas which was to replace the one he broke from the previous Christmas.  I think he broke it a couple months after he had it.  I was originally was against getting him a replacement.  What does that teach him?  That if he's not careful with this toys that it doesn't matter because someone will replace it for him.  I don't think I started asking for pricey gifts until high school, but I think that's about the time where kids become brand conscious and stuff.  He's going to be 10!

I wonder where he picked up this habit.  I wonder if he knows the value of a dollar (God, I feel old just typing that out).  We've kinda touched on the subject with him before.  The usual doing chores for money/allowance.  He's never actually followed through on any of the "chores".  They were simple tasks: walking the dogs, cleaning his room, cleaning up after himself after a shower.  He can do the math.  If walking the dog gets him $0.50 per walk (and by walk, I mean taking them out to do their business), he knows how long it will take him to save up $50 for a game or whatever, but he still asks for big ticket items.

He's not entirely bad with money.  He does save his birthday cash which he loans out to his mom.  Seriously, what kid has to loan money to their parents at the age of 10.  I think it's more the entitlement that bothers me.  Enough rambling for now...

Spring Cleaning

I spent the better part of Sunday cleaning.  I find that I'm always in a cleaning mood when the step son or one of the hubster's friend is over.  I think it's some sort of stress relief mechanism.  I always feel so much better when stuff is clean, and I always wonder why I ever let it get so dirty in the first place.  As much of a neat freak that I am, it's really kinda gross how dirty I let my house get.  I've been trying a new system in my kitchen where I clean it up after every time it gets dirty as opposed to a deep clean every week.  I think the first mistake was that I put the hubster in charge of cleaning the kitchen every week.  I love him, but it was a disaster.  He would put it off until the last minute i.e. Sunday night at like 1:00 am.  I would then get up Monday morning to find a half clean kitchen.  I felt cleaning it myself in small increments as it gets dirty is better than our old system.

I cleaned the master bathroom a few weeks ago and I noticed that the whole bathroom and shower stall are much brighter after the cleaning.  It kinda makes me feel icky that it got so dull in the interim.  So a recap of what I did over the weekend:

• vacuumed - twice (kids are dirty)
• broke down boxes
• laundry
• organized mail basket - I let mail pile up in the basket and then I got through and file them away
• cleaned up kitchen and got rid of all the clutter so that you can eat at the table again
• picked up and organized all the dog stuff
• hung a corkboard in the office (that's been sitting there since early December) and cleaned up the clutter on my desk
• hung up all of my clothes that has been sitting in my basket for god knows how long
• finally cleaned out the fireplace (we have a gas fireplace that uses a switch to turn on and off.  It's great, but it collects dust like no other.)  It looks so much better now.
• swept the entryway

I feel so much better when my house is clean.  Too bad I don't have to time to keep it that way.

Red grunts

The hubster told me this story this afternoon. We were taking the dogs out. Usually, I have Egg Roll and the hubster has Red. Egg Roll is a speed peer and pooer. She's out and back in. Super quick which is awesome when it's cold or rainy out. The poor hubster has to stand out there with our ADD dog. If there's a slight breeze, it will take at least 10 extra minutes for Red to do her business. I guess today, Red was finishing up a number two and she had a "dangler". She was concentrating to get it to come unattached to her bottom. I guess she got so frustrated that she started grunting and grumbling. The hubster said it was the funniest thing ever, and he just stood there laughing his ass off. I kinda wanted to see this grunt and grumble. I'm sure it was as funny as he made it sound.

Home Owning Guide for Dummies Part 1

We bought our condo in 2006.  Somewhere between then and now, the garage door light bulb went out.  I want to say it's been out for about a year and a half.  We tried replacing the bulb with a regular light bulb.  No dice.  We tried one of those energy efficient ones.  Again, no dice.  We thought it had to do something with the unit, but we didn't want to buy another one.  So we gave up.  Our nice neighbor asked the hubster about it one day and he kindly looked up the issue in his manual.  By the way, his garage door is super quiet compared to ours.  He said we needed a special garage door light bulb.  The hubster stored that little tidbit away for eternity, never to actually act on it.  I come home from work yesterday and Mr. Neighbor asks if the hubster fixed the light yet. I say he hasn't gotten around to it.  He hands me a light bulb.  I'm amazed and grateful and say thanks.  Today, the hubster screws in the new bulb and voila, let there be light.  We are idiots.  Thanks, Mr. Neighbor.  File that under things no one ever tells you about owning a home.  So now I don't have to get into my car in the morning in the dark.  Yay for the little things

Fridays

Here at work we have flex time.  It basically means as long as we work 40 hours a week, we are allowed to portion out our hours as we see fit.  There are some basic guidelines that you should be here during core hours, but it's at the discretion of your manager.  So I usually bank up hours throughout the week, so I can leave early on Fridays.  This is usually not a problem, but some weeks, I'll get that surprise meeting from the same colleague and end up staying later than I want a Friday.  It totally messes up the start of my weekend.  I usually plan to go shopping or hitting the gym earlier so we can go out at night.  This is one of those Fridays.  I know you have to have this meeting today, but why schedule it at 2:00??  What's worse is that I started to car pool to work with two people and today was my day to drive.  I made a big stink about leaving early today, and lo and behold, this happens.